


open secret

by dashcommaslash



Series: slash [2]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: BDSM, Blood, Bondage, Boyfriends, Dubious Consent, Love, M/M, Sub!John, and some noncon blood-drinking off-screen, dark!Sherlock, pretty hardcore bdsm and a vampire so proceed with caution if you're squeamish, sherlock holmes is a genius, there's a vampire in 221b, vampire
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-21
Updated: 2013-01-29
Packaged: 2017-11-21 20:02:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,788
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/601546
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dashcommaslash/pseuds/dashcommaslash
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John can’t believe how long it takes him to get caught.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

John can’t believe how long it takes him to get caught. Not stealing his few pints a week from work—he’s been doing that so long, half his life, that it hardly seems wrong anymore.  _They pay me in blood_ , he’d wink at his family. Not dinner with his rugby mates, bowls and straws and a newly slaughtered deer opened and dressed on the sideboard so it doesn’t lose its freshness on the way to the table. In Scotland, okay, but in London? He opens the blood bags he’d bought on the bar and doesn’t ask questions. Not even the girls who mistake the nips for love bites, who like that he doesn’t mind their periods, or the pros he visits once or twice, or, as time goes on and even worse after Sherlock dies, the pale recovering addicts who like to be hurt. No matter that he spends all his life atoning for these violations. Sherlock would not have guessed.

He can’t believe how long it takes him to get caught with  _Sherlock’s_  blood.

The thing is, Sherlock gets hurt. A lot. He never understood it before, the obsession with a single person's blood, until a month after the pool incident Sherlock cuts his hand on a broken beaker and covers the table in blood. John stitches him up and makes him sit in the bathroom for ten minutes while John cleans up, makes things  _safe_. Three weeks later Sherlock gets stabbed, and before washing the towels he’s bled into, John stops to suck them like a hungry child. A couple of meals like that and John is sitting on the floor of the bathroom with increasing regularity, trembling and licking Sherlock's straight razor.

****

After Sherlock’s return, John knows there won’t be any more girlfriends. No one has ever hurt him the way Sherlock does. He really likes to do it—he isn’t putting it on for John. It excites Sherlock to pull John off during a blow job and hit him. He genuinely loves seeing fear in John’s face. One epic night, he decides to punish John for every sexual act he’s performed with anyone else. John can see Sherlock’s never had so much fun, and at the end he feels bizarrely clean, and loved, and when Sherlock tells him how well he did, John understands what he can do to help himself. Just after the next case, he clears his throat and clenches and unclenches his fists and says to Sherlock, “Punish me again tonight.”

“Hmm,” says Sherlock, not looking up from his experiment. “If you want that again, it wasn’t much of a punishment.”

“I do want it,” says John. “But not—I need it.” 

“Oh,” says Sherlock, eyes on him. “You did something I don’t know about. Interesting. “

John is silent; surprisingly, so is Sherlock, who the next night punishes him with relish without asking him once what he’s done. It’s simple and brutal, as punishments go—he makes John wank first to some fairly horrifying and possibly illegal images, stuffs his wet underwear in his mouth, beats him a bit for making a mess, blindfolds him, and then—John seriously cannot remember consenting in advance to what Sherlock does next. He should have known once he saw the blindfold, since Sherlock usually likes to look into his eyes during scenes. Afterwards he feels like he’s been to church, a thing that has actually been off-limits for decades. But Sherlock’s torture chamber has become his sanctuary.

Which is what makes his real perversion, his one genuinely irredeemable pleasure, the last thing on earth he would ever bring there.


	2. Chapter 2

John’s on his back with two fingers inside him, hands tied loosely to the headboard, Sherlock’s left thumb squeezing open his jaw. This is their version of a daily cuddle, this position. “Did I ever tell you about my first serial killer, John? No speaking.” 

John doesn’t like shop talk in bed, but he knows there will be a point. He shakes his head no.    

“He was _brilliant_ , John.” says Sherlock. “What a time that was. Oh, don’t do that face, John. He wasn’t nearly as handsome as you. Do you know why he got caught?” 

John’s heart is racing. He shakes his head no.

“He kept trophies,” says Sherlock evenly, and crooks his fingers. John cries out. “Like you do.”

John goes stiff with horror. For a minute they are both still and silent. Then Sherlock moves his fingers again. John whines and bucks.

“Don’t you want to know how I figured it out?”

John nods. It’s a rhetorical question. Never having been broken up with by Sherlock before, he didn’t realize how much it would excite Sherlock. It figures. And Sherlock _is_ excited, no doubt about that. He keeps on finger-fucking John and says, voice even deeper than usual, “Don’t you dare come while I’m talking to you.”

John nods again.

“Alright, so you’re a man with a guilty secret, that much is obvious. Your best friend comes back from the dead, and after you punch him in the face and _lick your bloody fist_ —yes, I caught that—you glance guiltily into his bedroom. There’s something there you need to hide. Oh, interesting—you’ve been sleeping there. Wanking there. Well—nothing I didn’t know, but it’s always nice to have proof.

"Well, John Watson is madly in love with me, that’s no trouble, really. But then here’s the odd bit. John Watson’s guilty secret is _not_ his obsession with me. John Watson’s guilty secret is _not_ that he likes to kneel in front of me begging me to make a mess of his face. No, he’s very open about that. It’s not women—he’s not ashamed of that either. Remember your birthday, John? It’s not kids—the man underneath me would never, ever work in pediatrics if that were the case. What about his porn collection? _Extremely_ conventional—so to speak. This man has the daylights shagged out of him and the devil beaten out of him as often as he needs, every ounce of degradation and care he requires, and yet he still spends ten minutes too long in the bathroom. What is this man’s secret?”

John nods. Sherlock slides his right hand from John’s jaw to his throat, a light and possessive grip.  His thumb seeks the hollow at the base, digging in until tears come to John’s eyes. Then he backs off, stroking John there. He repeats this twice, methodically. On an ordinary night, with John already so desperate, a little demonstration like this would be enough to send him under. But he struggles to stay afloat, even as Sherlock moves on to torture his still-tender nipple. He’s meant to be listening.

“Ok,” say Sherlock, as if kindly, “let me give you the highlights. You're in no state for anything else. You keep a shirt soaked in three-year-old blood—mine—in a drawer and, rather than masturbating into it, as I had assumed, you've actually been sucking on it. Yes, I cut off a little corner and tested it. Sucking on it, although I imagine it's lost its flavor by now. By the way, there's something a bit weird about your saliva, some extra enzymes, hope you don't mind I borrowed a little extra when you were drooling on me last night.

“Also, did you know there’s been some creative accounting with the blood supply at the locum? Seems to coincide with your tenure there—nothing serious, just a bit more blood ordered sometimes than seems strictly to be justified. Don’t worry, I set it right.”

 _I’m sorry_ , _I’m sorry_ , say John’s eyes. He hopes there isn’t going to be that much more talking. Sherlock twists his fingers, and he cries out.

“Oh, for Christ’s sake, John,” says Sherlock. “It’s hardly your fault, is it? On the contrary, I think you’ve been _very_ abstemious in meeting what must be incredibly strong needs.”

John nods, uncertainly. He is insanely hard. It’s lucky that he can’t come just from what Sherlock is doing—or perhaps unlucky, since it means that Sherlock can fuck John like this for an hour or so without letting him come. Sherlock loves this, of course, particularly since he can turn it into a real punishment with a few pleasant (for Sherlock) modifications. Is that on tonight’s menu? 

“What I can’t figure out is why you don’t _ask_ me for it. Do you think I _won’t_ give it to you? You’re not that stupid, John.”

John shakes his head. _I’m sorry_ , he wants to say.

“You must know you can’t keep secrets from me,” he says. “You cannot and you may not. Didn’t you know that?” Without waiting, he withdraws his thumb and hits John, medium-hard, in the jaw. “You can speak now. But don’t apologize yet. You haven’t earned the right. Tell me why you didn’t ask me for it.”

John hesitates. When Sherlock rakes his nails hard across John’s abused nipple, he says hurriedly, “I thought you’d—“

“Wrong,” says Sherlock. “As if I’d break up with a _vampire_. Don’t be stupid, John. Just think of the things I can do with you now. You want to drink from me. So tell me why you haven’t asked.”

“I can’t drink from you,” says John. “I don’t, I don’t know what I’d, I can’t, I'm _your,_ Sherlock—“

“Nonsense, John.” says Sherlock. “You haven’t bitten my dick off yet, have you? You’re _very_ good, John. You have loads of self-control. For instance, shut up.” He rubs his thumb over the slit of John’s cock and John jerks silently. He reaches down and tugs gently, then not so gently at all, on John’s balls. John doesn’t make a noise. It’s only when Sherlock leans in to lick a stripe up his face that he realizes he is (still?) crying. Sherlock hums in pleasure, then leans back and fixes him with a serious look.

"If you know me at all—and frankly, I’m starting to doubt it—then you must know that I can never, ever let you go now. You needn’t worry at all on that score. But the lack of trust you’ve demonstrated—you cannot and you may not keep secrets from me, John. It isn’t your right and it’s dangerous. Do you understand me?” 

John nods. He supposes he’s allowed to make noise again, so he lets Sherlock hear him cry. Sherlock caresses his throat, nodding approval. His eyes are dark with excitement.

“So for the next—oh—seventeen minutes, I’ll teach you not to be such an idiot. The lesson will be memorable, I promise. And then you’re going to tell me everything, and then, John, I am going to take _such_ good care of you.” 


End file.
